Paul Di Filippo Quotes

Gaia giveth even as she taketh away.The warming of the global climate over the past century had melted permafrost and glaciers, shifted rainfall patterns, altered animal migratory routes, disrupted agriculture, drowned cities, and similarly necessitated a thousand thousand adjustments, recalibrations and hasty retreats. But humanity's unintentional experiment with the biosphere had also brought some benefits.Now we could grow oysters in New England.Six hundred years ago, oysters flourished as far north as the Hudson. Native Americans had accumulated vast middens of shells on the shores of what would become Manhattan. Then, prior to the industrial age, there was a small climate shift, and oysters vanished from those waters.Now, however, the tasty bivalves were back, their range extending almost to Maine.The commercial beds of the Cape Cod Archipelago produced shellfish as good as any from the heyday of Chesapeake Bay. Several large wikis maintained, regulated and harvested these beds, constituting a large share of the local economy.But as anyone might have predicted, wherever a natural resource existed, sprawling and hard of defense, poachers would be found.
Paul Di Filippo
It was as unsatisfying as a handjob from someone wearing an oven mitt.
Paul Di Filippo
The emotional tone or affect of the tale should be hot and engaged, not remote and dispassionate.
Paul Di Filippo
That was asking a lot of my readers, I realized, but I was trying to write the novel I would most enjoy decoding.
Paul Di Filippo
What had happened was this. When still young, I had gotten the idea from somewhere that I might be able to write... Maybe the deadly notion came from liking to read so much. Maybe I was in love with the image of being a writer. Whatever. It had been a really bad idea. Because I couldn't write, at least not by the bluntly and frequently expressed standards of anyone in a position to offer any encouragement and feedback.
Paul Di Filippo
As many authors have said, if the writer is not surprised by events, then chances are that the reader will not be either, and grow bored.
Paul Di Filippo
Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.
Paul Di Filippo